Reporting by Will Hayward, Ryan O’Neill & Kyle Bright
Hi everyone,
We are back with another midweek briefing in your inbox – the Senedd is back from holiday this week and we’ve got plenty to talk about in this midweek briefing.
One piece of business before we start. Later this week Will is interviewing Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth. If you have questions that you want us to put to him, pop them in the comments.
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Last night the latest YouGov poll for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University was released. You can read the initial analysis here with full details coming at the weekend.
On Tuesday, Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth held a press conference with journalists to start off the new Senedd term. He covered a lot of ground but here is a quick tour of the key takeaways:
About 20 minutes into the press conference it was pointed out to Rhun ap Iorwerth that he hadn’t mentioned Welsh independence at all.
He responded that this wasn’t correct because he had talked about a “higher level of ambition” for Wales.
This is a really interesting stance to take. Plaid knows full well that overt support for Welsh indy is a net vote loser in the groups where they need to make gains. Therefore pitching it as merely a “higher level of ambition” rather than “let’s break up the UK” is less provocative for opponents of indy without alienating their base. Expect more of this as get towards May.
Plaid’s messaging about both Labour and Reform ahead of the election were made clear in this presser.
While he was relentless in targeting Labour’s perceived failings he spent far less time talking about Reform. He merely established they were a threat and saw Wales as a “stepping stone to Westminster ambitions”.
It is clear that, though Plaid want to portray the election as a choice between themselves and Reform, they don’t want to been seen as treating Farage’s party as a legitimate party of government.
Mr ap Iorwerth said he “truly believes” that a Plaid led administration will get more out of Keir Starmer than a Welsh Labour led one. He said “the UK Gov can get away with it [at the moment] because there is not enough scrutiny from the Welsh Government”. When asked what this looks like he said a Plaid led Welsh Gov would “raise the level of expectation”.
Plaid clearly sees a confrontation with Westminster as a win-win situation. Concessions mean more powers and money for Wales, whereas rejection sets up a narrative that Plaid can benefit from.
Betsi Cadwaladr health board has been in special measures for a decade. So this newsletter asked the Plaid leader “if you run the Welsh Government from 2026 will Betsi still be in special measures by 2030?”
He replied: “I have to say no”.
He went on to mention that, if in the first few months of a Plaid government they saw no improvement, that they would look to restructure the organisation perhaps splitting it into two health boards.
The Wales Office inside the UK Government issued an press release on Monday saying:
“Illegal working arrests and raids have reached the highest level in British history thanks to relentless activity by the Home Office’s immigration enforcement teams.
They proudly declared that raids have “soared by 77% in the UK since the government came into power, leading to an 83% rise in arrests”.
Given that was from the Wales Office they gave the Welsh context saying that:
“In Wales, 1,320 raids were carried out in 2025, leading to 649 arrests – a 103% and 85% rise respectively compared to 2024.”
I am not sitting here saying that immigration laws don’t have to be enforced or that is isn’t a big issue for many in Wales. However, the fact that Wales Office is spending its time putting out a 900 word press release with quotes from three different people (including the Sec of State for Wales) on this topic speaks to how much UK Labour see countering Reform as this main objective.
This is all at a time when the polls overwhelmingly show that Labour’s big problem in Wales is that they haemorrhaging votes to Plaid and the Greens.
Swansea Bay health board has declared its highest level of escalation for the second time in a week. The health board said this week its hospitals, which include Morriston and Singleton, are “exceptionally full” and has declared a Business Continuity Incident, which is the highest possible escalation level.
They said they were encouraging family members to help patients who are ready to be discharged, adding:
“We are pulling out all the stops to create capacity by discharging those patients who have completed their treatment and no longer need to be in one of our acute care beds.
“However, services in the community are also under pressure so timely discharge of those patients who are ready to leave hospital is currently a challenge. This is causing a backlog.”
The last time the health board declared this serious an incident was March 2025.
The UK Government have come under pressure to act over X after its Grok AI tool which was criticised for making sexualised images of women and children.
The BBC reported leaked messages from the Parliamentary Labour Party’s WhatsApp group where more than a dozen backbench MPs called on the government to “take a stand”, to “put our messages out in other places” and to stop posting on Elon Musk’s platform. Downing Street has indicated it will keep using the platform.
Ofcom are now investigating X and the UK’s tech minister has said she would back the regulator if it chooses to ban it altogether.
Just a few days before all this Welsh MP and Trade Minister Chris Bryant posted on X (obviously) saying: “Nobody is talking about banning X/Twitter in the UK. This is conspiracy theory no 3,627.”
That post has now been deleted.
Laura Anne Jones (Copyright: Senedd Cymru)
Wales’ only Reform MS has spoken out after she was banned from the Senedd for using a racial slur. Laura Anne Jones was suspended from the Senedd for two weeks after she was found to have used a racial slur to describe Chinese people.
Speaking to Radio Wales this week Ms Jones was asked if she’d reflected on her use of language during her suspension. She denied she was racist and said “language was very different and that was a term used for a takeaway” when she was growing up. She added she was “not going to sit here and make excuses because I am genuinely sorry” and said she would be “very, very careful with language that I use.”
Ms Jones also appeared to rule herself out of the running to lead Reform in Wales (not that she was ever in it) but said one would be announced “very shortly” and said they were “excited” to reveal their policies for Wales, without really naming any.
When pushed on detail she said they would “listen to our farmers”, tackle TB and stop planting trees in Uganda. She also denied Reform were the Tories in new clothes, saying “we have said no to people who are begging to come and join us.”
A Welsh chief constable will retire for one day from her £170k a year job so she can hold onto her pension. North Wales Police Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman is being allowed to retire for a single day as part of a “retire and rehire scheme” and be reappointed to the same rank the next day.
The scheme is legitimate and is described as a way to “retain skills, knowledge and experience of police officers at all levels” but retiring for a day ensures the constable’s pension will be frozen at the maximum amount rather than being reduced. A North Wales Police and Crime Panel meeting last month voted behind closed doors to unanimously support the request.
Last week we exclusively published contents of Welsh Labour’s election strategy (you can read that here). This was raised during First Minister’s Questions.
Rhun ap Iorwerth said:
“I’d like to congratulate the First Minister for capturing perfectly what’s at stake in May, as Labour’s leaked election strategy sets out: ‘Reform define the anger and Plaid define the hope.’ That is a very accurate summary, is it not, of the current state of play?”
The First Minister replied:
“I’m interested in hope. I’m not interested in fantasy, which is what we get from Plaid Cymru and what we’ve heard from some of their ideas when it comes to the offer for the people of Wales. People don’t want to see division. They don’t want to hear Wales being continually talked down.
Archaeologists have found the largest Roman villa ever found in Wales. Experts made the amazing discovery of a 572 sq m Roman villa while using ground-penetrating radar at Margam Country Park.
The team from Swansea University, Neath Port Talbot council and Margam Abbey Church told the BBC the discovery, which some are dubbing ‘Port Talbot’s Pompeii’, offered “unparalleled information about Wales’ national story”.
Most of the known Roman remains in Wales are from military camps and forts but discoveries like this are much less common. Crucially, the land where the structure was found has not been ploughed or built on, meaning it is likely to be pretty well preserved. Experts will next seek to have the land preserved and source funding so it can be excavated.
Eluned Morgan presented a commemorative Newport County football shirt to the Bilbao team Athletic Club during a visit to the Basque Country on Friday. The First Minister visited after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Welsh and Basque governments.
This is actually a fascinating bit of history; in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War 56 Basque children were settled in Caerleon, just outside Newport. They were supported by members of the local community including Maria Fernandez, a Bilbao-born resident of Wales who played a significant role in their care.
Football was a big part of the children’s integration in Wales (a team, Basque Boys, was even created), and the red and white striped VX3 x Lover’s F.C kit, which was launched by Newport County for the 2025–26 season in Athletic Club’s famous colours, celebrates this connection.
Featuring the names of the children and the adults who cared for them, it even has a label that says: “In 1937, when the Basque people needed help, Wales responded.”
The Welsh Government is providing £2.1m in funding to support businesses in Wales in the use of AI.
The funding aims to empower Welsh small and medium enterprises (SMEs), entrepreneurs and microbusinesses to integrate AI into their business practices ethically and effectively.
Welsh Labour have pledged to cap bus fares in Wales at £2 if they lead the next Welsh Government.
It is the first manifesto pledge from one of Wales’ main parties in 2026 and transport minister Ken Skates said the promise would cost a “relatively affordable” £35m a year. It would be the most generous bus fares scheme in the UK, with Scotland trialling something similar in certain parts of the country. They say they would also introduce 100 new bus routes across Wales between 2027 and 2030.
That’s all for this week. I just want to give a shout out to Kyle Bright, a journalism student who joined us on work experience this week. Kyle helped put this midweek newsletter together.
We’ll be back on Sunday with the Rhun ap Iorwerth interview and more.
Take care
Will
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